Expecting People with Obesity to Repent?

Buried in the jargon of a paper newly published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied is a stunning observation. Weight bias comes from feeling disgusted by people with obesity — thinking they are not trying hard enough to fix their problem. “Those people should repent of their obesity” seems to be the thinking. But then, maybe “thinking” is the wrong word. This phenomenon is more about feelings than it is about rational thought.

Joanne Beames and colleagues describe their findings as “evidence for a pro-effort bias in prejudice toward individuals with obesity.” They conducted a series of experiments that showed information about efforts to lose weight and maintain a healthy lifestyle was  a more important factor in obesity prejudice than information about causes of obesity or a person’s weight status. They also found evidence that the emotion of disgust was driving prejudice toward people who are seen as not trying hard enough to live at a healthy weight. The authors go on to say:

Interventions to reduce weight stigma might be improved by highlighting the fact that many individuals with obesity are actively trying to lose weight. In this way, we can work toward developing more effective ways to minimize the widespread prejudice and discrimination against individuals with obesity.

This last idea is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, it’s pragmatic and true. Most people with obesity have put a great deal of effort and angst into managing their weight and their health. Great suffering results because obesity is so resistant to individual efforts. It keeps coming back like a boomerang. If knowledge of these facts will blunt the widespread prejudice toward people with obesity, so much the better.

But on the other hand, this line of thinking implies some sort of morality test for people with obesity. Do people with the chronic disease of obesity really need to repent in order to gain social acceptance?

The bottom line is no. Every one of us will suffer disease and death. Nobody gets a vote on the matter. Human frailty is not a matter of moral retribution, it’s a fact of life. Get over it.

Click here to read the study by Beames et al. Click here for perspective on an alternative approach in fat studies programs for reducing prejudice.

Regret, photograph © natalie / flickr

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February 23, 2016